A discussion of the implications of the different meanings of the word "play" in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Tom Stoppard's production, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, is very intelligent in its linguistic style, thinking ability and manner of speaking. The two “main” characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (R&G), engage in complicated wordplay while finding comfort in a world they don’t understand. Their play on words, and the play on the word "play", results in great comedy, while serving as a means for Stoppard to explore the relationship between audience and actors. Its absurdist theater suggests an existentialist theory as a stunned R&G wanders through his indifferent and bizarre universe. At the beginning of the play, R&G decide to “play” a game of questions, in the form of a tennis match. They believe that their "ping-pong" investigations will help them question Hamlet about his morose state. A very entertaining battle of words follows, reminiscent of the repartee of Hal and Falstaff in Henry IV and the stichomythies of Richard and Anne in Richard III: Ros: We could play questions. Gil: What good would that do? Ros: Practice! Gil: Statement! A love. (33) However, unlike Richard, who won Anne's hand, R&G's wordplay leads nowhere. It is Hamlet who “murders” them during the interrogation, because he makes them “ridiculous” (47). The allegory of the tennis match continues; according to Guildenstern, they were “caught on the wrong foot once or twice” (48). Likewise, their clever wordplay comes to nothing, as each question is answered differently: “Guil: Do you think that matters? no matter why?Guil (gently teasing): Isn't it important why it's important?Ros: What's wrong with you?PauseGuil: It doesn't matter” (36). Stoppard's clever pun on "matter" may allude to Hamlet, 2.2:191 Polonius: What are you reading, my lord?192 Hamlet: Words, words, words.193 Polonius: What is- he, my lord?194 Hamlet: Between whom?195 Polonius: I mean, the problem you read, my lord. This witty banter continues throughout the play. An implication of this is that Stoppard blurs the line between R&G - they are constantly confused about their true identities. The only way we can perceive the personality difference between R&G is through their speech – as Guildenstern says, “words, words.” That’s all we need to keep going” (32). The whole play is based on the speech. To be without is like being “a mute in a monologue” (54). R&G are spontaneous in their speech – or so they think. However, Stoppard wrote his lines – there's nothing spontaneous about it. They “play” with words in a desperate attempt to show their free will and escape the “room” they reluctantly find themselves in. However, as the audience knows, their desire cannot be fulfilled. Stoppard ironically controls this seemingly random and bizarre banter between the two. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just characters in a play. They are nothing more. The result is that there is an ironic gap between what we know and the limited and flawed perception of the character. As Rosencrantz says: "They'll drag us until we're dead!" (85). R&G ignores their fate; dramatic irony ensues to great comic effect: “Player (to Guil): Do you know this play? Gil: No. Player: Oneslaughterhouse – eight corpses in all” (75). This irony is both comical and decidedly morose. Stoppard plays a delicate balancing act between humor and horror; the play is both intellectual and hilarious. Their wordplay distracts them from the inevitable truth of their powerlessness, but it is only a momentary respite. The light banter between them throughout most of the play seems to mask a sense of helplessness, an unbearable anxiety that cannot be expressed in dialogue. As Stoppard himself once said: “There are no words to express how much I love words.” Stoppard makes fun of R&G because they fail to express what they think. Words are simply not enough. The result is frustration. In reference to Hamlet: “Ros: Stark delusional and sane. PausePlayer: Why? Gil: Ah. (To Ros) Why?Ros: Exactly.Guil: Exactly what?Ros: Exactly why.Guil: Exactly why what?Ros: What?Guil: Why?Ros: Why what, exactly?Guil: Why is he crazy?! Ros: I don't know!" (60). Guildenstern yells at Rosencrantz near the end of the play; "Do you think conversation will help us now?" (112). Their absurd discussion goes nowhere. Questions questions such as “[i]t there is a God?” are quickly refuted; instead of focusing on how to escape their fate, they reflect on their ontological status, on the “who!” what why” in endless puns that repeat and repeat in cyclical desperation. To give an example, Guildenstern repeatedly plays with a line from the Lord's Prayer, referring to the necessities of life: “Give. we today our daily bread…” Guildenstern sardonically corrupts this and calls for theistic intervention, knowing that nothing will come: “Guil: Consistency is all I ask! Ros (softly): Immortality is all I seek… Guil (dying fall): Give us today our daily week…” (37). Guildenstern's play on the well-known prayer highlights the absence of "basics" in their bleak world. R&G is helpless and must beg for a higher order. They plead for “consistency”; something completely lacking in the absurd and fanciful world they inhabit. However, R&G seem to have no real belief in an underlying goal - they only care about the plot as it involves their subsequent deaths. Their world is devoid of spirituality – it remains only a “place without any visible character” (1). This structure is repeated again and again – pages 30, 37, 85, 93, 105 – each time more desperate than the last time. Without morality, represented in the form of religion, life is nothing – R&G live in a repetitive world at the “mercy of whims which reason cannot explain” (Robinson 88). Thus, Stoppard abandons any didactic objective and writes “anti-theatre”. – the lack of logic dominates in his bizarre production, evoking Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and other absurd plays. It paints a postmodernist picture in which ultimate values ​​have been lost, primarily because of the sheer horror of World War II. Stoppard's depiction of the dark and indifferent world of R&G was influenced by this existentialist theory. R&G asks fundamental questions about their existence but receives no answers in return. Their play on words, the constant questions answered by questions, helps to reinforce this sense of absurd despair: “Guil (seriously): What's your name?Ros: What's yours?…Guil: What's your name- do you when you're at home? Ros: What's yours?…Guil (grabbing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? (35). The result is an absurdity inherent in all their games of.